


End of the Line

by Slasherholic



Category: Halloween Movies - All Media Types
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Angst, Blood and Gore, Brutal Murder, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Female Reader, Kidnapping, Manipulation, Michael is a Twisted Evil Bastard, Objectification, Original Character Death(s), Original Character(s), POV Multiple, Predator/Prey, Rape/Non-con Elements, Sadism, Slow Burn, Stockholm Syndrome, When Michael Catches You He's Gonna Fuck Your Brains Out
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-28
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:54:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23363515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slasherholic/pseuds/Slasherholic
Summary: You are Michael's plaything. Tonight, he is toying with you in a very mean way—by trapping you in an abandoned building and hunting after you, mercilessly.As you stumble blindly through the dark hallways, you are unsure if this is just some cruel game; perhaps it is for real, and Michael is done with you, and you are finally going to meet the same grisly fate as the rest of his victims.It doesn't matter.The Shape is on the prowl--you are his prey. Run, and for the love of god, don't get caught.
Relationships: Michael Myers & Reader
Comments: 11
Kudos: 63





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Alternative summary: An entire flippin' Halloween movie starring you as the final girl, except Michael Myers fucks your brains out at the end. This gets heavy fast. Mind the tags. I'll try to update bi-monthly. No smut yet, very much a slow-burn, but the payoff will be huge, I promise~

You recall reading once about a woman who woke up in a morgue.

She’d been declared brain-dead, toe-tagged, and stuffed away into a cramped, dark, cold little space like a sardine in a tin can to rot until further notice. Perfectly suitable living arrangements if you’re an unfeeling corpse.

Not so much when you’re alive to recognize the walls pressing in around you. Not so much when you’re aware enough to feel the panic swelling in your gut.

You lie on your back in the swirling darkness and blink rapidly, your knees drawn into your chest, your neck and joints painfully stiff, your every heavy breath drawing a sour odor deep into your lungs, and your rationale tells you that the trunk of your car is not, in fact, a morgue; but it sure as hell feels like one.

The car goes over a bump, and one of the many grocery bags stealing your much-needed breathing room topples over on its side. What you think is a milk carton comes tumbling out to poke you in the ribs. You’re vaguely aware that you’re squishing the bread—or something else cushy—but your concern for it penetrates no deeper than “awareness.” Instead, you focus on your counting.

“Forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty.”

Your words are fainter than a whisper, swept away by the purring of the engine. You absently stroke the fuzzy carpet lining on the sides of the trunk as you count—a distraction, to keep that creeping, suffocating panic that makes your hands tingle with cold-pin pricks from clawing its way back to your head again. Count, you remind yourself, whenever the tingling begins to spread up your limbs—count.

“Fifty-eight, fifty-nine, sixty.” Another minute you’ve been along on this involuntary ride.

Bringing you to a total of thirty-two since Michael seized you off your front porch on your way to the door, dragging you back across the driveway like a pig to the slaughter, thrusting you down into the trunk, slamming the door, nearly taking your fingers off in the process.

The counting had been a last-ditch effort to try and screw your head back onto your shoulders before you lost it completely, and it seemed to be more or less working. Having a sense of time is a solace. The bigger picture of the puzzle is impossible to know with so much missing information, but you clutch at your tiny piece of it anyway, because without it you are blind, and with it, at least you know this is no trip down the street. Michael is taking you somewhere far away—and you suspect that when the trunk is popped, there will no longer be any rosy Illinois suburb to greet you.

You try your hardest not to think about that though; because the thoughts of what will happen _after that_ will all come flooding back.

Here comes one now, wriggling like a parasite through your marrow: _He’s done with me. He’s driving me somewhere to kill me and after that he’s gonna dump my body in some gutter._

Don’t let it in. Don’t let it in. If you do you will only start to cry again, and the tingling will sweep back up your body to crash like a wave over your head, and you will lock up like a corpse and breathe harder and faster until you are suffocating, or at least that’s what it _feels like_ , so please please please, for the love of god, don’t let it in.

“One.” You start over and your voice is tight. You try your damnedest to ignore the pressure building in your sinuses.

The car goes into a smooth turn, and a can of _something_ knocks against your hip. You haven’t even been jostled too much on the ride—Michael is a surprisingly competent driver. He takes the speed-bumps a little too fast, which accounts for most of the jostling. And sometimes he hits the brakes too hard. But it’s nothing that would get him pulled over, and you guess that’s the point. Slipping undetected through the background is what Michael does best.

Going over another speed bump, your head knocks against the side of the trunk, making you chomp down on your lip. A warm coppery taste floods your mouth. You sniffle and count harder.

“Ten, eleven, twelve…”

The car goes into a _hard turn_ , like he’s cranked the steering-wheel all the way to one side, the momentum flattening you up against the trunk door.

“Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen—” Frantic counting.

The car screeches to a stop. You forget how to breathe.

Then, it starts to reverse.

“Twenty.” You grab a handful of the nearest plastic bag because it is the only thing to hold onto.

“Twenty-two.” The car is still backing up, the tires crunching over what sounds like broken glass. The panic has numbed your fingers and is spreading up your chest, a hot-cold tingling sensation.

“Twenty five.” There is a shrill squealing of brakes as the car slows to a crawl—

—and you stop counting. Because the car has stopped moving.

Beneath you, the tickling of the engine cuts off.

Your heart was already sprinting in your chest but now it accelerates feverishly, ramping up to a blistering speed.

Outside you hear the drivers’ door squeal open. Then the crunch of boots over what sounds like glass as Michael steps out of the car.

 _Danger_ , says some dumb little instinct in the primitive core of your brain, _danger is coming, fight, fight for your life._ You call it your _lizard-brain,_ and the lizard-brain is oblivious to the crushing reality of the situation which your rational-brain already knows: _there will be no fight._

Whatever Michael’s goal is in doing this to you, be it fear or blood or most likely both, he is going to take it from you. Trying to stop him is like trying to stop the turn of the very earth beneath your feet, and the harsh truth of the matter is that you are once again pathetically at the mercy of a predator who has none.

The scrunching of his boots gets nearer—he’s walking around the side of the car, toward the trunk.

Don’t make it easy for him, insists the lizard-brain, refusing to go belly-up and die.

The handle of the trunk pops with a “click.”

_Fight. Fight. Fight-fight-fight-fight—_

It is dark outside the trunk. Michael is nothing more than a looming outline of black, just a shape, with broad shoulders and strong arms and eerie stillness bordering on unnatural.

One gape-mouthed look up at his familiar figure is all it takes to silence the chanting of your lizard-brain.

His thick arm shoots suddenly inside the trunk. Another dumb instinct seizes your body before his hands do: _freeze._

Strong fingers snake around the front of your shirt. In one quick tug Michael sweeps you fluidly up and out of the trunk, your spine scraping against the metal lip on your way out. Your world flip-flops as you topple over the edge, tumbling into a free-fall for a split second, spilling to the ground.

Your head and back knock against a cold floor. Wheezing, you look fearfully up at the dark shape that is Michael, aware that you’re half-laying across his boots.

But you don’t move.

His hand comes reaching down again and it’s closer to your face this time so you scrunch your eyes shut tight. His fingers take up root in your hair and suddenly you’re being whisked across the floor like a burlap sack—but you don’t move. Where your shirt rides up across your lower back the broken glass scrapes against your skin like nails, and the tightness on your scalp is agony, and you clamp your jaw shut tight, whimpering through your teeth—but your fingers don’t shoot up to pry at his, your heels don’t dig into the floor to hinder his lugging.

You are dragged fifteen feet before Michael drops you. Your shoulders knock against the ground as his hand withdraws. Your scrunched-up eyes stay shut tight, tears now slipping out from beneath your lids. His heavy footfalls retreat again, crunching back toward the car.

You lay still in the exact spot where Michael dropped you in the dust and glass on the cold floor, still not knowing why he’s dragged you all the way out here (or even where here is,) but you do know one thing, and that is _don’t you dare move a single inch._

Sure, your lizard-brain may still bark at you when your heart gets pounding, but it no longer has any desire to bite Michael back.

This new instinct—one that locks your joints and glues your limbs—is your law, and your law goes like this: Be limp. Be obedient. No matter how ugly it gets. Fighting only excites him, so don’t do that. And never, ever, ever run; only prey run, and you can’t be his prey. The moment that happens is the moment you lose your life.

So although your heart is beating nearly out of your chest, although the tears are coming freely now, you lay like a discarded toy on the ground and try not to cry too loudly while you wait for Michael to come back and play with you some more.

But because not knowing where he’ll pounce from next is far too gut-wrenching, you peek your eyes open a sliver to watch.

Michael’s shadowy figure stalks back around the car to the open drivers’ side door. He bends and dips down out of view, reaching for something within.

In the meantime you have the briefest of moments to study your new surroundings.

It is some sort of corridor, you realize, squinting. You can just make out both walls, lined with rows of what you think are lockers of a color you can’t make out—narrow, but not quite claustrophobic. And Michael appears to have backed your car right up into the building.

Tilting your chin toward your chest, glancing beneath the car, you catch a glimpse of the world outside, past what was, at one point, a pair of glass doors. Their metal frames lie on the ground now, shattered.

It’s not so dark out there, under the moonlit sky. You see a big, empty lot. Unlit street lamps. Faded parking spaces.

A lizard-brain thought arises which tells you to crawl beneath the car, dash out across the lot, and book it into the night before Michael returns. And at that your rational brain chuckles and procures images of Michael calmly and coolly getting right back into your car, putting pedal to metal, and running you down flatter than a pancake—and oh, _he would_ , he’d do it in a heartbeat.

If he didn’t slit your throat then and there perhaps he’d haul your shattered body right back inside the building, right back to this very spot; and then you’d have to suffer through his torment with broken limbs and broken ribs and broken god-knows-what-else.

Michael’s boots crunch suddenly as he shifts his weight, startling you. Your eyes flit to him just in time to see him standing up from the car, shutting the door behind him.

Even in the dark— _especially_ in the dark—Michael is a formidable sight to behold. The moonlight filtering through the open doorway bathes his figure in a silvery outline and cloaks the front of him in shadow. The flared collar of his coveralls juts proudly out around his neck at mismatched angles, and the resulting silhouette is regal and imposing in a wild, vicious, untamable sort of way.

It is the sort of sight which, were he safely behind a foot of glass, you would have paused to study in awe and admiration.

But a predator is far harder to appreciate when it’s stalking right towards you.

Michael advances—and you become a small defenseless animal, caught beneath the gaze of a monster. Shivering all over, you scour the blackness where his eyes should be for any glimpse of murderous intent—but in this dismal lighting Michael’s cold irises can’t be seen. Only felt.

He stops in front of the trunk and goes sill. Lurking there. Watching you come undone.

You gnaw your lower lip until it starts to bleed and blink away the tears as they come.

Half a minute passes before you notice the elephant in the room.

In Michael’s left hand he clutches something stark and white, eerily visible in the surrounding dimness. His mask.

But in his right, clutched as nonchalantly as if it were some harmless prop, silver moonlight dancing across its sharp edges, you eyeball the unmistakable curve of Michael’s favored murder weapon.

All seventeen deadly inches of it.

Your heart drops like a stone. Your mouth goes bone-dry.

The bite of that knife is more familiar to you than the kiss of a lover—you have the scars to prove it.

So fixed you are on that awful, awful knife that when Michael’s still silhouette at last jerks to life you flinch, uttering a little cry, positive that he is going to surge forward and seize you.

But he is only reaching up to put on his mask.

It occurs to you now that you have never actually seen Michael putting it on. You’ve seen the reverse plenty of times though, and there is no mystical transformation to be witnessed when the veil lifts away from his face, no change in his mannerisms, no difference in his stiff posture—Michael, for all intents and purposes, is the same dark, lurking, deadly force as before the mask came off.

But at least with it off he is still human; at least he still has a face, however barren; at least he still has eyes, however uncaring, however cold.

Now, as Michael pulls the mask down over his mess of dark hair, down over his eyes, over all his features, over everything that makes him readily identifiable as human, if you didn’t know better you might say that the person beneath the mask had been effectively hidden away.

But you do know better.

Nothing at all about Michael is being hidden. The empty mask does not conceal. It only reveals. It reveals Michael’s deepest nature better than his face ever could. The black voids in place of his eyes communicate his intentions more effectively than any of his stony glares ever could.

You know that Michael does not _become_ The Shape when he disappears behind that mask, because he never stopped being The Shape in the first place.

It’s just that now, he cannot be mistaken for anything else.

Michael tugs the mask all the way down until it settles around his neck. Like clockwork comes his breathing—in to fill his lungs and broaden the silvery outline of his chest, out again.

The Shape is complete.

You shiver on the cold ground, staring, not moving.

The Shape towers above you, a dark monument—and you have never felt so incredibly small.

All your worst fears have been realized.

The shoddy line drawn in the sand that separated you from all those other victims has been kicked over, scattered to the wind.

You are prey. And Michael is going to hunt you.

His motionless form comes alive again, lunging. The chanting of your lizard-brain comes roaring back. Not _fight fight fight_ , but simply,

_Run._

No. No, you can’t. No, there is no running from him.

_Run. Run or he’s going to kill you._

Shut up. Shut up. _Shut up._

_He’s raising his knife—it’s over. Run. Please run._

And suddenly the thoughts searing through your mind are not lizard-brain thoughts but just _your thoughts,_ ringing true and clear.

Michael drops to one knee and throws his full weight into the momentum of the thrust—the knife in his fist cuts an arch through the air, racing toward your sternum.

You throw yourself onto your side, out of its path. Pain shoots down your shoulder blade as you roll, the knife raking across your back, barely missing your ribs—if you had reacted a millisecond later you would be choking on your own blood right now.

Your laws fall to anarchy. You scramble backwards across the floor, cutting your hands on the shards of broken glass, pulling your legs beneath your body, shooting to your feet, nearly toppling from the momentum, regaining your balance in the very next step, and breaking into a blind sprint down the hallway, into the all-consuming wall of blackness, the terrible unknown.


	2. Chapter 2

You make it thirty steps before the blackness bites you.

Your foot catches on some stiff piece of metal and your brain can’t catch up with the rest of your body to realize why you’re suddenly laying face-down in the dust on your stomach, why your legs aren’t still pumping, your arms not still pistoning—and then, all at once, it hits you.

You’ve tripped.

If you weren’t such a small and frightened animal you would start to cry again. _But that’s not what frightened animals do_ , screams your lizard-brain, _frightened animals run. So get up. Get up and keep running._

You do. You barrel back into the unknown. If Michael’s footsteps are still behind you you can’t hear them over the blood rushing to your ears, sweeping through your skull, dizzying your vision in a sickening way. A sticky hot wetness drips down your back from where he cut you but you don’t care about that right now. Run. Run.

You run for a long time. Until reason tells you that you’ve left Michael far behind—but reason currently has no place in your oxygen-starved thoughts. The sound of his breathing still rings in your ears and your mind is plagued with a terrible prophecy that your next stumble will be headlong into his chest. That he will lunge out from the blackness and seize you and it will all be over.

Hugging the wall, you dash around another corner—

—and there, at the end of the corridor, you can’t believe it. You think your mind is playing some cruel trick, so you keep looking down the hall, keep stumbling towards it, but no, there is no trick, it’s really there—

—a light.

Making the hallway before you not black but rather a shade of grey, like an old-fashioned photograph. And somewhere around the next corner must be its source.

You are a moth drawn to a flame. Nothing matters but that light.

Tearing through the dusty hallway, you see now what’s been tripping you—toppled desks, scattered all up and down the corridor, their metal legs jutting dangerously out.

 _Oh_ , comes your realization. _It’s a school_.

The corridor is a cluttered wreck of disrepair. Every classroom door you blitz past is boarded up with nails and planks. The paper on the walls peels like a bad sunburn. Wires hang down from broken panels in the ceiling.

And now, you understand what that suffocating must-smell hanging like a stiff blanket overhead is—the reek of abandonment. Michael has brought you to an abandoned building. There does not exist a more perfect hunting ground. Scream as loudly as you want because nobody will hear you, run in any direction you please because you are a rat in a maze, a fish in a barrel—escape was never a possibility in the first place. 

But you don’t think about that right now, only about the light. Reach the light. Reach it before it fades. You tear around the corner—

—the light is blinding.

Wincing, your forearm shoots up to shield your eyes from the horrible strain.

 _“Stay the fuck back.”_ Barks a voice.

And you nearly topple over in shock. Raising one hand to cover the beam, you blink past it, your heart racing in your chest.

Three wide-eyed faces gawk back at you from behind three flashlights, all of them trained on you like rifles. The guy in the middle—the only guy—wasn’t lying about the knife. He holds it out across his flashlight in the sort of way that a police officer might hold a gun, but he doesn’t have the look to complete the image. With his dirty-blonde hair collecting around his shoulders and studded black leather jacket, the knife-guy looks more likely to get arrested _himself_ than to be the one doing any arresting.

He leers at you like you’re a convicted felon anyway.

“You see this?” He continues, swishing the knife a bit. “I don’t wanna use it—don’t make me use it. You just take it easy and stay right the fuck there.”

You hardly hear knife-guy’s words. What your brain clings to instead is the fact that there are _People. You are not alone in the darkness. There are people in this building._

The realization makes your pounding heart soar and for a second your head is in the clouds and all you can think is _maybe I won’t die tonight after all._

To knife-guy’s left is a short and trim Mexican woman with thoughtful eyes like black pools, the biggest you’ve ever seen. She clutches tightly at his bicep with one bony hand and stares across the hall at you like you’ve sprouted a second head. The tall girl on the right must be some sort of athlete, with strong legs and golden-tan skin and a high brunette ponytail. She gawks like she’s just seen a ghost—or like she might be giving up her own ghost at any second.

Nobody moves for a moment, and in the end you just stand there, looking each other up and down.

And then some cold and bitter voice in your head reminds you, _these people are lined up for a slaughterhouse._

The hopeful thoughts in your head crash like a fiery trainwreck. Your eyes go round and horrified.

Graphic images assault your brain, of cuts so deep that you can see yellow fat and sinewy muscle and bleach-white bone, of dumbly gaping mouths, of dead, unfocused, cloudy eyes, sightless—the look of a corpse. You see in your mind’s eye that look on the faces staring back at you and your racing heart does a flip-flop into your stomach; you clench your jaw shut tight and think about not throwing up. _Please don’t throw up. Please don’t throw up._

“Listen lady,” Knife-guy says, breaking the silence, sweeping his hair out of his face with his elbow. “We don’t want any trouble, alright?”

 _Too late for that_ , you think.

“If you’re trying to screw with us it just ain’t gonna work, yeah? So I’ll cut you a deal; you turn around, we turn around, we go our separate ways, and then we pretend we never even saw each other. That sound fair?”

Panic flares in your belly and all the moisture is sucked from your mouth.

 _“No!”_ The plea leaves you before you can even think. The tall girl on the right utters a little gasp at your outburst, jumping like she’s been burnt.

“No, no you don’t understand.” Your words are desperate; you hold your hands up in front of you like you actually are a convicted felon, just because it seems like the right thing to do; knife-guy seems to think it even more now.

“I’m not gonna hurt anyone. I promise, alright? But please, please, you have to listen to me—”

 _“Jesus!”_ Knife guy clutches his knife tighter. “I’m trying really hard not to be an asshole right now, okay? I don’t wanna be that macho douchebag that yells at girls, but honestly lady, you sound like some sort of nut! And believe me, we don’t want any of—”

“Oh Travis, honestly, _quit it_!” The short girl, silent as the grave until now, hisses sharply, elbowing Knife-guy in the ribs. Knife-guy shoots her a little look of _what the hell dude_ , which she ignores.

“There’s something wrong, dammit—I mean, look at her!”

You assume she’s talking about the look of horror sprawled across your face, or about the cold sweat clinging to your reddened cheeks, or the fact that you must look like something that just came crawling out of the woods.

But then, you feel it again. You feel it trickling down your lower back, down your side, making your shirt cling to your skin, wetting the hem of your pants. And oh, that’s right. _You’re a bloody mess._

Now, the pain registers. Your salty sweat stings the wound in an agonizing way. Paling, you reach gingerly beneath your armpit, toward your back, dreading the inspection, but doing it anyway. You need to know.

Your palm meets the cotton. You whimper, because your shirt is soaked-through.

Pulling your hand back, trying not to tremble too hard, you glance down at your fingers. They’re coated all the way to your palm in dark, shining red.

Michael cut you deep.

“Holy shit.” Travis breathes, his jaw tightening. You blink up at him again, fighting tears now.

“I’m—I’m not gonna hurt you, okay?” You stammer. “But please, you need to listen to what I’m telling you.”

You pause to lick your lips and swallow and the silence in your stead is horrible, as if every breath is being held.

“This isn’t a prank, it isn’t a joke—you guys need to get out of here right now, and I mean now.”

The silence stretches on; the short girl, the tall girl, the knife-guy—Travis, the short-girl called him—they all gawk at you as if you’ve spoken in tongues.

Then, chaos.

“Fuck that.” Sobs the tall-girl, her voice breaking. “Fuck that, I’m so not staying here. I can’t believe I let you guys talk me into this, we could have gone to see a movie! Let’s find Ashley and Josh and go.”

“Wendy, come on! She’s just trying to freak us out!”

“Well it’s _fucking working_ , dude!”

“Both of you cut it out!” The short girl hisses, her volume a near-whisper. “Keep it down! Travis, for god’s sake, she’s telling the truth—you seriously think she did that to herself?” She eyes you anxiously, her gaze lingering on the blood eating through your shirt.

“…how did it happen?”

Her words twist something in your gut and you grimace. No, you can’t answer that—you can’t even _think_ about that. You’re going to be sick.

But the short girl stares at you like you’re about to divulge the cure to cancer, and she isn’t going to leave it alone. So with a shuddering breath, in a voice so frail you can hardly hear yourself, you choke out the barest-bones answer you can muster.

“ _There’s someone else in the building_.”

Your dread is a virus and the virus is contagious. The tall girl—Wendy—wilts visibly, terror overtaking her features. You think she might faint. Travis goes deathly silent, his expression hardening. The short girl chews her lip like a wad of bubblegum.

 _Good_ , you think. _Great_. They believe you. _Now let’s get moving, please and thank you_ , because you simply can’t stay here any longer. Michael will not have given up the chase so easily. Any moment, the ghost-white of that awful mask is going to breach the dark. You know it. You can’t stay here. You need to get moving again.

But the short girl still isn’t satisfied.

“Who?” She asks, tears shimmering in her big brown eyes. Her words hang on her lips. “Who’s in the building?”

Your heart beats as fast and hard as if Michael’s hands are around your neck this very moment. 

_Will they believe you?_ If you look these people in the eye and tell them the honest-to-god truth about who is lurking and stalking and hunting his way through these unlit corridors, will it tip the scales swinging in their heads hopelessly back into disbelief? Will they tell you to get lost, and to take your sick, twisted, poor-taste-of-a-joke with you, and what kind of a person pokes fun at something like that, anyway?

“It’s—he’s—”

You never get to finish. A sudden scream rips like shrapnel through the air.

The faces behind those blinding flashlights go paler than sheets. The blood in your veins runs cold. 

It is a bloody, piercing sound. It seems to rattle the walls around you. It goes on and on and on. When it cuts off it is abrupt and final and all the sound in the building is sucked away with it.

A cold, sneering voice in your head whispers, _Well they’ll have to believe you now, won’t they?_

Michael’s found someone.

~

_He knows the hallways well. Even in the dark._

_He stands at the intersection with the broken water fountain on the ground and does not move except to fill his lungs with air. Listening. The girl had been loud; her footsteps carried far. He followed the echo and hunted her easily._

_Now the echo has gone silent._

_Looking down, staring at the floor beneath his boots, he sees them; shoe prints. Sitting freshly in the dust. Hers._

_He does not need the girl’s sounds. Only her prints._

_Studying them, he knows that she did not turn off here. Knows she kept going down the hall. Toward the locker rooms._

_He lifts his head and looks into the dimness after her, breathing the stale air deep into his lungs._

_The hunt will be over quickly; the girl is running in a circuit._

_Taking the left, stepping over the broken water-fountain, he walks silently down the hall. The heat at his hips throbs, impatient. His thumb rubs back and forth across the handle of his knife._

_The girl will not see him coming. Not until it is too late._

_He will grab her by her hot neck. Will let her twist in his hands. Will make her—_

_**…** _

_—he stops. Listening._

_Hears footsteps._

_Turning in a slow circle, looking over each shoulder, he searches the hall. Sees a set of double-doors. Listens more. Grips the knife harder, watching and waiting, breathing the stale air…_

_The doors swing open._

_...and it is not the girl._

_There are two of them. Two with flashlights. They keep on walking down the hall and do not look in his direction. Do not notice him standing across the way._

_He watches them go and the heart in his ribs pulses steadily and rhythmically. The urge comes—follow the prey._

_He follows._

_He will have the girl later._

_He will have her for a different urge._

~

You have never seen so much blood. Not even on Michael.

It shimmers starkly against the faded-blue lockers, streaking down in heavy wet lines toward the floor, pooling between the divots in the tile like tiny rivers, which trickle outward, extending their reach down the hall.

To your right, Wendy slaps her slender-fingered hand over her mouth. She sucks in big gasps of air and her shoulders shudder violently.

The short girl—Diane, you heard Travis calling her—stands next to Travis, her arms wound so tightly around his waist that if she squeezes any harder you suspect she might bisect him.

Travis just stands there. Shining his light at the gore. Entranced.

Your mind is blank as you yourself drink in the mess—blank and numb, thoughtless.

But when the smell of it hits you the tide of nausea comes racing back towards the shore.

You are no stranger to the tang of blood but this differs from the stench that clings to Michael when he comes home from a hunt. _That_ smell is mixed among the salt of his sweat—muted by the scent of _him_ —and the result is more primal and heart-pounding and less knock-you-on-your-ass dizzying.

But this smell is raw and undiluted. Straight from the source. It drains all the color from your face. It threatens to bring you right down to the floor.

You place a hand on a clammy locker door to keep from staggering.

“Look.” Diane whispers.

She untangles one arm from around Travis’s waist, raising her flashlight, shining it at the floor behind the puddle. You see what she’s pointing at. Bootprints.

The pattern on the sole is unmistakable. They are Michael’s.

They lead ten paces down the hall where they stop in front of a closed door. Squinting, you can just barely read the painted black letters on the door, letters which may have once read “Boy’s Changing Room.”

“Those aren’t Josh’s.” Travis breathes, squeezing the leather grip of his hunting knife tighter.

To your right, Wendy’s gasps become sobs. She collapses suddenly back against the row of lockers, their doors rattling harshly. You wince; Michael’s going to hear her.

Travis and Diane are on her in less than a second.

“She’s dead.” Wendy gasps. “She’s dead. We have to get out of here—”

“Christ, Wendy, stop it.” Travis hisses. Shoving his flashlight into Diane’s hand, he kneels at Wendy’s side, quick to clamp his hand over her mouth.

“You cut that out right now or you’re gonna get us killed.”

“Breathe,” Diane adds, sinking down to stroke Wendy’s hair.

Wendy tries to breathe, but it’s more of a blubbering in the end.

“You don’t know that, anyway.” Travis continues. “She could be alive right through that door, bleeding out. No way are we leaving until we find her.”

“She’s not.” You state.

Travis whips around. His scowl says it all.

Getting to his feet, he plucks his flashlight out of Diane’s hands and stands up rigidly straight. He shines the beam right in your face and you wince, wrinkling your nose at the brightness.

“Yeah lady? Alright, prove it; I don’t see a body.”

The tough-guy act is only skin deep. Blinking past the blinding beam at Travis’ face, you can see he’s tenser than a wire. He _knows_ you’re right. He _knows_ his friend is dead. He just doesn’t want to admit it.

You eye him sternly and hold your ground.

“I’m just being realistic; that’s a lot of blood.”

Travis’ nostrils flare, and all of a sudden he is walking across the hall with lurching strides.

The man approaching you is not small by any means—Wendy is taller than him, but only by an inch. His jacket is thick and puffs out around his arms, making him wider at the shoulders than he probably is, but his stature is sturdy, and his figure is close enough to Michael’s to plunge you into panic-mode.  
  


Your limbs lock up habitually. You brace against the locker for hurt.

Travis stops at an uncomfortable distance from you, the leather of his jacket nearly grazing your chest. His breaths come heavily through his nose and you can feel them beating down on your face, hot and shallow. 

“You had better tell me right goddamed now,” He whispers through grit teeth, “ _What the fuck is in this building with us._ ”

The tightness in his voice is enough to unlock your limbs, enough to bring you out of your submissive trance, enough to make your lizard-brain realize that the man standing over you with a knife in his fist is not Michael, not even close—he’s just some college kid. Just as scared for his life as you are.

You don’t try to mask the hopelessness in your eyes as you finally spill.

“Do you know who killed all those people in Haddonfield last year?”

It’s a rhetorical question. Everybody with a working television or radio knows. Everyone who bothers to pick up their newspaper from their driveway in the morning knows. Everybody in the entire god-damned state knows. Hell, the entire god-damned country knows about those murders. It was all over the national news stations for a week into November, delivered each morning by a solemn news anchor:

_And now, an update on the grisly string of murders which took place just last week in Haddonfield, Illinois—unofficially dubbed “The Babysitter Murders.”_

_The Haddonfield police department released an official statement this evening identifying the primary suspect in this ongoing case: Michael Audrey Myers, psychiatric patient and former Haddonfield resident, who escaped from government-mandated care on the night of the 30th._

Travis seems to hold his breath. When it comes out again it makes his upper body shudder. _He knows, alright._

“Wait—” Wendy stutters, her frail voice cracking hard. “Wait, but I thought, didn’t they catch that guy?”

“They didn’t.” Diane pronounces quietly, shaking her head slowly. Her eyes are glued to the blood on the floor but they look unfocused and distant, like her mind is elsewhere.

“I’m following the Myers case for my thesis, and no, they never caught him.”

Travis’s invasion of your personal space finally relents. He steps back and begins pacing between you and Diane, his brow scrunching up in thought. He reaches up with his arm to wipe his hair out of his face.

“Okay, so you _think_ it’s Myers,” He begins. “But come on, how do you _know_? How do you know it isn’t just some other freak? I’m sure there are plenty of real sick fucks out there, all I’m saying is that there’s no way you can know _for sure_ it’s—”

_“Guys?”_

Every head whips toward the changing room, and every flashlight follows.

There, peering tentatively out from behind the door where Michael’s boot prints lead is another tear-streaked face, a college-aged kid, no older than nineteen. The grey hood of his too-big hoodie is drawn up over his head.

 _“Josh!”_ Diane whispers.

Josh studies you sheepishly, his glossy eyes round and anxious. Then, he sees the blood. His eyes squeeze shut tight in an instant and his forehead lolls toward the door frame, knocking against it with a dull thud. His entire body begins to heave with silent sobs.

Diane shoots up from Wendy’s side like a rocket, tip-toeing around the gore. Reaching Josh, she embraces him in a tight hug, and Josh buries his face eagerly into the nook of her neck and only shakes harder. Diane caresses the frizzy ringlets around his ear and shushes him.

“If you saw anything,” She whispers, “You have to tell us. We need to know what happened.” 

“Is she dead?” Wendy sobs up from the floor, her slender fingers still clamped over her mouth.

“I-I don’t really know, man.” Josh chokes out. “It happened so fast. We were just coming to find you guys, a-a-and she saw the court, she tried to go check it out, b-but when she opened the door she got—she got—”

He gives a strangled little whimper and shakes his head weakly, burying it back into Diane’s shoulder, done.

 _She got grabbed,_ you finish in your head. It’s not a guess—it’s a fact. You don’t need Josh’s commentary to piece together what happened here.

Looking back at the smeared blood on the lockers, you see now where Michael did it, where he smashed this Ashley girl’s face into the aluminum doors, leaving divots and dents behind in the metal. At some point, Ashley had started screaming.

You drop your gaze to the heavy splatter of dark red on the tile again. 

She screamed, until Michael slit her throat.

“He followed me in there.” Josh sniffs, jerking his thumb at the locker-room door. “I ducked in a locker and he walked right past—but then he stopped and just stood there, like he was—I don’t know, waiting for something. Or—or listening for something.”

Josh wipes his nose on the sleeve of his hoodie.

“I was so scared, man. I thought I was dead.”

You listen to Josh speak and the unease in your stomach twists.

“Where did he go?” You ask. Josh eyes you warily.

“Um. I dunno, he just kinda… left.” 

All the hair on your neck stands on-end at that. You know how Michael’s mind works—at least to some extent—and you know how he _hunts_. And you would bet your life on the wager that he hasn’t gone far at all.

Your eyes dart up and down the hall and you squint past the reach of the flashlights, into the edge of the looming blackness. Josh’s words play like a tape recorder in your mind: _She saw the court. She went to check it out._ You squint at the closed doors leading to the basketball court. Your breaths shallow.

Oh; that’s where Ashley is.

“No offence or whatever, but who the hell are you?”

“She’s just some lady we found.” Travis answers for you. “Look, did you see him kill her, man?” Travis grabs Josh suddenly by the shoulders, shaking him like it’ll knock the sense back into him. “Come on, you gotta remember so we can get outta here. Where is she?”

You point an accusing finger at the basketball court.

“I think she’s in there.”

Everyone with a flashlight trains it at the doors. Another strangled sob leaves Wendy. Thick red handprints glisten wetly on the beige wood, just above the door handle.

Travis eyes the gore for a moment. Then, knife at the ready, he approaches the double doors.

It is for a wickedly selfish reason that you do not utter some warning of _he’s still in there, moron, and your friend is dead, and you’ll be next._ It is for a reason more potent than the fear of stumbling blindly through the darkness again; a reason more powerful than the fear of being alone in this desolate place. A reason that you are ashamed of for even thinking, but one that your lizard-brain—the part of you that cares only about your own continued survival, _and to hell with everyone else_ —gurgles gleefully: _If Michael kills them, maybe I’ll get to live._

And if not, then at the very least you can make a break for the exit while he’s busy sheathing his knife in their guts.

You look silently on as Travis carefully, _carefully_ , nudges the door open with his shoe.

The room inside is just as abysmally dark as the rest of the school. Travis, hovering on the edge of the door frame, not daring to step foot beyond the hall, shines his flashlight around to inspect. It’s a basketball court alright, and surprisingly uncluttered. Sets of stadium bleachers line the walls on either side and loom like metal giants. Travis shines the light all around its periphery, illuminating every dark corner. There is no Ashley to be found—or Michael.

But there _is_ more blood. A trail of it, leading out across the court, wrapping around the bleachers, disappearing from sight.

“Travis, no.” Wendy whimpers. “You can’t— _oh god_ , please Travis, don’t go in there—please don’t. Please don’t.”

“Yeah,” Diane quickly agrees. “I think the best thing we can do for her now is to call the cops. Travis, he could still be in there.”

Travis looks anxiously back over his shoulder at her. He swallows like there’s a lump in his throat.

“Look. There’s no fucking way in the world I’m gonna leave her here with that psycho. Not until we know. This place is empty, alright? So as long as you guys stay close behind me… that fucker isn’t gonna get anyone else. I promise.”

Guilt flares in your gut. Your eyes fall to the floor. You can’t look at him. You know that not a single person standing in this hall will live to see the sun come up.

For simple fear of being left in the darkness again, when everyone shuffles into the court, you do too. Beams from all four flashlights rove the walls like spotlights. Every head is on a swivel. Travis is at least right about one thing: the room is huge and empty. There’s no way that anything could sneak up on you in here, not a housecat, not a tiger. Not even Michael.

The thin trail of blood disappears behind the bleachers—your heart pounds in your throat as the group draws nearer. The silence weighs like a heavy blanket.

Reaching the corner of the bleachers, everybody peers around the bend. You squint into the dimness.

There, suspended five feet off the ground, swaying sedately back and forth—a figure.

Travis shines his light up at it.

It is the limp body of a woman. She hangs from her neck by a length of climbing rope dangling down from the ceiling.

Somewhere in the background, Wendy starts to wail. _“Oh god. Oh god. Oh my fucking god.”_

The body turns, slowly. When it turns all the way around you can just make out the messy red ruins of her throat beneath the rope, slit quite literally from ear to ear.

Reality stares you in the eye, gape-mouthed and grotesque, and it will not let you look away. You drink it in and all your thoughts, even the lizard-brain thoughts, are silenced.

You study the blood seeping from the gaping gash in Ashley’s neck. You watch the way it drips down her sternum, how it eats in splotches through her white tube top, the garment pulled half-way down her chest, exposing her breasts on one side. You look all the way down to the puddle of glistening blood beneath the body and watch the droplets trailing off the slender ankles, dripping to the floor and making tiny ripples in the deep, dark red puddle beneath.

When your thoughts finally return you realize all at once that you have never witnessed Michael commit a murder. You have never had to see him plunge his knife into a screaming, crying, terrified body, but oh, you can picture it so vividly, can hear the pleading and the begging, can imagine Michael twisting the knife deeper, can see him tearing a life away with the ease of one kicking sand over a fire to snuff it out.

You know that will change tonight.

You know other things too, things that make nausea bubble up your throat, and you know before it happens that you are going to vomit, but not because of the body.

You know that Michael is a monster; you know it like you know that grass is green. You know what you are to him and you know that you should _despise_ him for it. You know that you should want to see him _burn_ —and a part of you does. A part of you wants nothing more in the world. A part of you wants to be the one who lights the match.

But there exists another part of you which sits like a gaping black hole right in the middle of your chest, and when the hole is open—which is most of the time—you feel cold and hollow and empty on the inside, and when it is closed you feel complete again, if only for a short while.

You know that the hole is _need._ And the need wants only one thing.

Standing here, staring up at the reality of what Michael is, of what he does, of what he will do to you tonight, even now, the hole in your chest still needs him like lungs need air.

He will kill you and it will not make you need him any less. Will not make you _want him_ any less.

And as terrible, twisted, perverted, fucked-up as it is, it won’t make you love him any less, either.

It was Michael who held you down and cut open the hole in your chest; and now Michael is the only one who can fill it.

The bile rises up your throat and you are sick.


	3. Chapter 3

Sometime before Wendy’s hysterical wailing had stopped and after the stench of bile had dissolved into the background, Travis cut Ashley’s body down. **  
**

You shouldn’t touch her, Diane had warned him, but Travis insisted on it. He said he didn’t want to look at her eyes anymore.

You hug your knees against your chest and look over at where Ashley lies face-down in a heap on the floor, a streak of blood mapping out the path where Travis had dragged her by the armpits out of the dark red puddle, depositing her on dryer land, and you cannot say you blame him, not at all.

Ashley’s lids are not shut all the way. One of her eyes still peeks out from underneath long eyelashes, glazed-over and sightless, looking at nothing.

_I’m sorry,_ you feel obliged to tell her out of courtesy; but you aren’t entirely sure what you are apologizing for, and the apology feels empty anyhow. Maybe Michael’s heartlessness is contagious.

Or maybe it is because every fiber of your lizard-brain is screaming in hopeful unison, _better her than me. Better her than me. Better her than me._

The group sits now in a tight huddle on the floor at one corner of the dusty court. Travis holds Diane in his arms and stares blankly at the nearest basketball hoop. Diane clutches big handfuls of Travis’ shirt in both her slender hands and can’t seem to peel her eyes off of Ashley. Wendy, no longer sobbing, is the only one not sitting—instead she mills around aimlessly in front of the bleachers, pacing back and forth, following alongside the white out-of-bounds line. Sometimes, briefly, you turn and watch her pace.

Then you look away again and return to vigilantly scanning the unlit corners where the flashlights do not reach. You scan for movement; for an out-of-place shadow; for a shape creeping steadily closer.

Michael hasn’t left the room—not after what he did with Ashley’s body.

Like a hunter mounting a prize buck, he’s taken meticulous care to display his kill. He _knew_ that you would find it. He _meant_ for you to find it.

Now, you’ve given him the pleasure of observing your individual break-downs.

Of listening to Wendy sob and blubber, of seeing Travis clutch at his long hair and swear and punch the bleachers until his knuckles bloodied, of seeing you keel over and wretch on the ground. You are terrified. All of you. Michael knows this—and he is lurking somewhere in those reaching shadows, unseen and unnoticed, drinking in that terror like a favored television channel.

You are entertainment. 

To your left, Josh lifts his head out of his knees with a little sniffle, wiping his nose on the back of his hand. He licks his chapped lips before speaking.

“Why’d he do that to her?” He asks in a whispery croak, talking to nobody.

You glance at him. Travis and Diane do too.

“Why’d he string her up like that? Why the fuck would he do that man?”

Because he’s playing, comes your internal response, as quickly as if you were reading from a script—because Michael’s actions are play. Because he’s trying to scare you shitless and it’s working. Because it’s fun and he’s getting off on it. Because he’s sick and twisted and evil and just not right; and so are you for needing him.

Diane shifts suddenly in Travis’ lap. She pulls away from his embrace and sits upright.

“It was a pattern in the Haddonfield murders.” She explains softly, absently tracing a pattern with her pointer finger in the dust on the floor.

“The bodies, see, they were all moved around from their places of death, and—and, um, _displayed._ It’s been happening all around the state, wherever there are mass killings. So that’s why people think Myers is behind all of them.”

She continues to trace her pattern and goes silent. The silence is contagious.

Near the bleachers, Wendy is still pacing. You doubt she even heard Diane’s statement. It’s probably for the best.

“Why don’t you siddown, Wend.” Travis suggests.

You watch Wendy as she walks over to the bleachers and sits. Then, as if the bench were crawling with ants, she shoots to her feet again—climbing up nine steps—plopping down onto the tenth. She stares at her knees. She doesn’t move after that.

“Hey. You.”

You glance over your shoulder at Travis. His eyes are glassy and dull. He gazes at you steadily.

“So what’s your deal anyway, huh?” He questions flatly. “Are you, like, some kinda adrenaline junkie? Exploring a place like this alone at night without a flashlight?”

His eyes glint with something bordering on suspicion.

“And you just… ran right into Myers?”

Josh and Diane turn their heads and look at you too, curious. You glance away from their eyes without meaning to and stare at your shoelaces. Shit; you’ll have to tread carefully here, very carefully; the truth will not keep you in these people’s good graces.

You breathe in deeply, slowly, before speaking.

“Believe me, it wasn’t by choice.” You begin, bundling your arms around your knees, tugging at your shoelace. “It happened so fast—I got home from the store, I got out of my car, I walked up my driveway. The next thing I know, I’m being grabbed and locked in the trunk.”

You shut your mouth quickly. It’s not a lie; it’s just not the whole truth.

There’s another moment of silence. You can’t look the others in the face. For a frightening moment, you can’t tell if they’ve bought it or not.

Then, Josh pipes in.

“How’d you get away from him?”

“I didn’t get away. He let me run. I think he wants a chase, before he…”

Your voice trails off. You glance up from the floor and make eye contact with Josh. His gloomy look tells you that you don’t need to say anything more.

From the bleachers, Wendy murmurs something under her breath.

“We can’t hear you, Wend.” Travis says.

You watch Wendy lift her head from her knees, staring right at you. Her face is an unhealthy color and her cheeks are streaked with tears.

“I said, maybe he just wants _her_.” She repeats with a sniff. “Maybe if he gets her he’ll fuck off and leave us alone.”

Your stare-off with her lasts for an uncomfortable time. Wendy sniffs when the snot runs too far down her nose. You pluck agitatedly at your shoelace. 

_She’s right, in a certain way,_ your inner-voice chimes in. Michael does want you.

But some bitter part of you wants to tell her, _He wants you too._ He wants you Wendy, and he is going to get you, and once he’s caught you you’re going to beg him and cry until the tears won’t come out anymore, and guess what Wendy? If you’re lucky he’ll kill you quick—and if you’re not, he’ll do it slowly. If you’re unlucky, Wendy, Michael will kill you not with an easy flick of his knife but over the course of _many long months_ , and it will hurt far worse than that knife would have, because by then you will not just fear him, Wendy, but you’ll love the sick evil bastard too, he’ll make sure of it—and when your time comes those tears won’t just be terror and fear, Wendy, they will also be the coldest, loneliest heartbreak.

You are so lost in your spiteful fantasy that it takes you a moment to realize the room has gone deathly quiet. As if Wendy’s suggestion is a cool and logical point and not-at-all the desperate petitioning of a girl terrified for her life. As if offering you up to Michael like a sacrificial lamb is a perfectly sane thing to do.

But no, it’s really happening—you can tell by just their stern and guilty faces that the people huddled around you are seriously considering it. 

You speak up for yourself before they get to thinking too hard.

“Alright, maybe he does just want me” You tell Wendy. “But what if you’re wrong? What if I die, and he keeps right on coming? Wanna know what happens then?”

Wendy sniffles. She makes a face like you’ve kicked her in the stomach. Her eyes scrunch up like she’s about to cry again. You don’t care.

“If I’m dead, and you’re wrong, then you’re gonna be next.”

Wendy makes a choked sound and now she’s crying again. She buries her head in her knees and her body heaves silently.

At your exchange, Diane shakes her head in frustration. She clambers out of Travis’ lap and rises to her feet like there’s a fire beneath her ass.

“Alright, come on, everyone up.”

An awkward moment passes where nobody moves. She snaps her fingers in a huffy way.

“Come on, I’m dead serious! We’re gonna tear out each other’s throats if we stay here. We need a plan to get out.”

Gazing solemnly up at Diane, some defeatist part of you says that it isn’t even worth trying. Michael will get what he wants—Michael always gets what he wants. It’s in his nature and he’s very good at it.

You clamber to your feet anyway, because Diane is right—wherever Michael is lurking in this vast, empty room, it is only a matter of time before he grows bored of watching.

No matter how much your rational brain has accepted it, you do not want to die tonight.

One by one the others follow your lead, clambering languidly to their feet. Travis first, then Josh. Only Wendy doesn’t get up—from the bleachers she murmurs that she can hear just fine from where she is.

You get to planning. It turns out that Travis is some sort of urban explorer, so he’s been to the school before. According to him the only exit (and entrance) that hasn’t been blocked off or boarded up over the years is the one that they all came in through. The same exit that Michael _drove you in through._

“That’s the way we gotta go.” Travis says to the huddle-up, like a football coach giving a rousing pep-talk before the big game.

“We _can_ get out of here—he’s just one guy right? I mean yeah, this is one sick motherfucker we’re dealing with, but he isn’t some boogeyman. Here, look.”

Travis bends, reaching for his hunting knife where it rests in his ankle holster, drawing it out, holding it in the air to enunciate his point.

“If he finds us, I’ll cut him. And then we just run and we don’t look back. Wend, come on. We can’t stay here.”

In your periphery you watch Wendy slowly untangle herself from her knees, rising off the step as though waking from an unsatisfying nap. She begins descending the steps.

Then she trips.

Her scream is jerked out of her as if yanked by a string. She topples in an instant, falling hard, the sharp clank of her head meeting the bleachers echoing in the vastness of the room.

Every head whips.

For a second it seems as though she’s only lost her balance. Then every flashlight is trained on her like a spotlight. Your blood runs colder than ice water.

Beneath the bleachers looms a dark and imposing figure. The figure’s white face is ghastly in the harsh yellow beams.

Michael has been lurking right beneath Wendy the entire time.

His dangerous hand penetrates the space in the steps, clamping like a vice around Wendy’s ankle, tugging with all his immense strength as Wendy screams and kicks at him, trying to pull her down through the gap. Wendy won’t fit.

She aims another frenzied kick at Michael’s hand. This time, the strong fingers are dislodged.

Wendy is on her feet again incredibly fast, pulling her leg out of the gap. She starts frantically down the bleachers, limping.

_“Go!”_ Travis screams, at her, at everyone.

You go. It is a mad scramble for the far door. Travis half-carries Wendy, the two of them lagging behind.

You burst through the exit doors and Josh and Diane are in your wake. Behind you, Travis screams to hold it open, hold it open.

There is a single moment where you gaze back into the dark court and see The Shape approaching, cutting through the darkness like a ship gliding through water, utterly unstoppable.

Then Travis and Diane collapse through the doors. Immediately Diane swings them shut. She throws her body up against the wood.

“Hold them! Hold them!”

Everybody braces against the doors. The squeak of Michael’s bootsteps over the court booms thunderously, closer and closer, and then—

He kicks.

You get jostled hard, your temple slamming against the wood. The doors rattle horribly.

He kicks again. His force is explosive. Monstrous. Unbelievable. He does it again. And again. The onslaught does not stop or slow.

Wendy screams. Josh is crying. Your combined weight won’t be enough—with every kick Michael is opening the door a few inches further.

Your head whipping around, you scan the dark hallway frantically. When you see your saving grace you can _hardly_ see it—the flashlights all hang in occupied hands—but squinting, you know that it is there and not some figment of your desperate imagination. Against the base of the opposite wall lies a thick slab of wood.

You scramble away from the door. Somewhere behind you Travis yells at you to “get your ass back here.” Plank in hand, you scramble back.

Michael kicks again. This time the doors open a little too wide, wide enough for his vicious hand to shoot through the gap. The hand closes around Josh’s hoodie and yanks him violently upward, sweeping him clean off his feet, into the air, effortless. Josh flails and screams.

Travis cries out and swipes at the hand with his knife.

The hand lets go, bloodied now, retreating through the gap again.

“Just a little longer!” You scream, and jam the plank through the handle bars. A tight fit.

Now everybody scrambles away from the door. The thunderous kicking on the other side doesn’t slow—it picks up furiously, the doorframe trembling, the walls shuddering feverishly, and for a moment you are sure that Michael in his hideous strength is going to bring the very building down around you. You hold your breath.

But the plank holds dutifully. And the doors do not open another inch.

Then, all at once, the kicking stops.

Everybody drinks in big gulps of air, and nobody moves for a while. Perhaps waiting for the dreadful moment when it all starts up again. Waiting for Michael to kick harder this time and deliver the final blow that will twist the doors clean off their hinges. Wendy makes little pained sounds from her heap against the wall. Josh whimpers and shakes like a leaf. Your hands are balled into white-knuckled fists.

…but the silence prevails. The kicking is over. Michael is gone.

Travis is the first to shake off the thick stupor.

“We have to move.” He says, gripping his knife. “He’s just coming around the back. We have to move.”

Wendy sobs in pain as Travis dips down and scoops her up beneath her armpit, dragging her hastily to her feet.

You flee again—not alone this time but as a herd, a herd of terrified animals stampeding through barren hallways, barreling through the blackness as fast as Wendy’s injured ankle will allow.

Josh has a breakdown as you run.

“He was in there that whole time.” He keeps repeating, a skipping record-player. “That whole goddamned time, he was just watching us that whole goddamned time.”

“Stop it.” Travis pants between deep, gasping breaths. “Just stop it. I can’t take that anymore. He can’t catch up. We’re gonna be fine. As long as. We just. Keep moving.”

All at once there is no more hallway. You’ve reached the end. You double over in a pant, planting your hands on your knees.

Travis was right—there is a door here. Diane shines her flashlight up at it, illuminating the glass pane, and through it you can see the hallway on the other side. Your eyes go wide in recognition.

There, beyond the door, down the hallway, you can see your car, the pale moonlight filtering in. Your heart leaps into your throat. _You can see the exit._ Then, you look a little harder and your heart sinks again.

On the other side of the door a blockade of desks and chairs is piled high, a cruel barricade.

Travis shrugs Wendy onto her own two feet, who grimaces as her ankle grazes the floor. He lunges for the door handle, pulling back and forth savagely, as hard as he can.

There’s no give.

He pounds his flashlight hard against the glass in frustration.

“Fuck!” He shouts, his hot breath fogging over the glass. “Fuck! This wasn’t here last time! _Fuck!”_

“Are we stuck?” Wendy sobs.

“Most of the classrooms have two entrances, don’t they?” Diane asks. “There are open hallways on the other sides of all these rooms, right? Travis, isn’t that right? We can cross through one! They can’t all be blocked!”

Travis locks his hands together on top of his head, shaking it profusely.

“No, no. Most of the classrooms are locked up.”

“Wait.” Josh’s voice trembles, hoarse from crying. “Wait, I think I saw an open one.” He jerks his thumb into the blackness behind you.

“Back there.”

Josh is right; you saw it too. It was a blur, it happened so fast, but yes, you are sure of it—one of the classrooms had been wide-open, a beautiful invitation.

“You think?” Travis asks. “Or you _know?_ Because “think” isn’t gonna cut it right now, man!”

“He’s right.” You interject. “I saw it too. It’s maybe three-hundred feet back.”

Travis looks from Josh to you. Then back at Josh.

“You guys are positive? Totally positive?”

Both of you nod.

“Okay. Okay, let’s move.”

Wendy, supporting herself against the wall, utters a thin little cry, as if the thought of that is too unbearable to even imagine.

“No! We can’t go back that way! _He’s down that way_!”

Travis ignores her as he scoops her up beneath her armpit again.

“Jesus Wendy, look around! We’re trapped if we stay here!”

Wendy blubbers in response, her face a red, snotty mess. But it is enough to get her moving.

Your dash back down the hallway is even madder. The flashlights swing about the hall, strobing in the dimness. Your lizard-brain screams obscenities at you as you run.

_Predator this way, danger this way, wrong way, turn around, turn around!_

You shove each and every one of them aside. Just run.

“There!” Diane yells, jamming a finger out in front of her. Twenty paces ahead, to the right of the corridor, sure enough, there it is.

One classroom door is wide open.

You reach it. Immediately you notice what you hadn’t in your dash up the corridor—the door isn’t just open, it’s ruined. The shabby thing hangs uselessly on its hinges. The metal all around its frame is twisted and warped. A dreadful feeling settles like a suffocating blanket.

This isn’t right.

“Woah, careful.” Diane says, shining her flashlight into the room. Peering hazardously inside, you know in an instant that it’s some kind of science classroom. The black lab countertops are covered now in a thick blanket of dust. Chairs and upturned desks are strewn about the ground not dissimilar to warzone debris, their metal legs jutting out like bayonetts at every angle.

“Take it slow.”

Travis shuffles into the room first with Wendy attached at his hip, helping her step carefully around the minefield.

“Travis?” You ask after him in a breathy pant, still hovering at the edge of the room.

“What.” He says flatly, out of breath himself.

“All that shit blocking the door back there, none of that was here last time?”

“No, it wasn’t. Can we focus please?”

You ignore him, the gears in your head cranking.

“Okay, okay. So there’s only one hall that still leads to the exit? And it’s on the other side of this classroom?”

Travis has already crossed half the room. Josh and Diane follow close behind, trailing at his heels like ducklings.

“Yeah,” He calls back over his shoulder. “Look, I’ll tell you all you want about this place as soon as we’re ten goddamn miles away, now are you coming or not?”

_No, this isn’t right,_ blares some silent alarm in your brain. None of it is. The barricaded door is not right. The broken lock just isn’t right, dammit, it’s too convenient. Too…

…Oh. Oh. Ice water floods your gut.

It’s too deliberate.

The pieces fall into place.

It’s Michael. This is Michael’s doing. All of it.

He’s been to this building before. He’s been _tampering with it._

This classroom is not a lucky break, not even close—it’s a choke-point. An ambush.

It’s a trap.

And Travis and Wendy are about to walk right into it.

Before your warning can erupt up your throat, the trap is sprung.

Travis and Wendy step through the doorway at the opposite side of the hall.

Out of the shadows, the black shape lunges.

You watch the ambush from the opposite side of the room, a useless, frozen statue. 

Michael’s knife catches the beams of the flashlights and the gore gleams. He swings it in a powerful arc through the air, the deadly tip racing toward Wendy. There is the harsh ripping of denim. He’s caught her in the hip.

With a piercing scream Wendy falls forward into the hall, swept off her feet by Michael’s stunning momentum. Travis sprawls backwards into the classroom, unbalanced himself, but springs up again like a cat, pulling his knife from his ankle-holster as he stands, lunging at Michael, swinging blindly.

Michael’s hand strikes faster than a cobra. He catches Travis by the wrist and shoves him with ghastly strength. Travis flies backwards, falling, skidding on the floor, his head colliding with the nearest desk in a heavy thud.

Michael’s bloodied hand closes around the doorknob. He yanks down on it savagely. The knob strains for a moment—the metal around it whining and groaning—then snaps clean off. His red fingers grip the side of the door, and with a lunging step back into the hallway, he slams it shut behind him.

On the other side, Wendy screams hideously.

Travis is on his feet again now, scrabbling madly at the door, trying to pry his fingers between the metal frame to wedge it open. It won’t.

He pounds his fist hard on the glass and yells,

“Run Wendy! Just run!”

You watch through the glass as Wendy clambers painfully to her feet, limping away from Michael.

Michael, vanishing back into the blackness, chases. 

Travis dashes madly back out of the room. He leaps over table legs and pushes past you in a blitz, erupting into the hall.

“This way!” He screams behind him, already sprinting. “Come on!”

Josh and Diane lap at his heels. You follow orders as blindly as a soldier in a warzone.

Travis takes a sudden right, skidding around a corner. Then, windmilling his arms to stop his momentum, you see him screech to a halt. As you catch up you can see why.

It’s an intersection.

“Which way?” Diane gasps, doubled-over in a pant.

Josh points his flashlight at the floor. 

“Fuck. Oh fuck.”

You follow the light of his beam and see the blood, a shuddery trail of heavy droplets. Wendy’s.

Travis flicks his light down the corridor to your left. On the wall is a sign that reads “POOL” in big blue letters.

“Down here!”

Not wasting a second Travis is off again, following alongside the bloody trail like a hound. Diane bounds after him.

Josh does not. He stands frozen in place, his chest heaving rapidly with lack of breath, and gazes down the hall after his friends. He glances at you. You make eye contact for a split-second.

Then Josh turns on his heel and starts sprinting away in the direction you just came. His footsteps get fainter. Then they are gone.

In an instant, you are alone again. All alone in the dark. Alone and rooted in place. Your feet won’t move.

_Get out,_ says the lizard-brain. _Get out now while he’s distracted, run back to your car, drive away into the night, keep driving for a long time, don’t ever look back, live in a new state, run away from him, survive, survive, survive._

A tightness blossoms in your throat. You feel about to cry again. You can’t; you can’t. You couldn’t even if you wanted to. This place is a labyrinth in the dark and you do not have a flashlight. If you dash back into those barren halls, you will be blind again. Stumbling and helpless again. Easy prey.

Travis knows the building. Travis is your only chance at ever escaping this maze. Travis is your one chance of living to see the sun come up. The lizard-brain considers these possibilities, ignoring the defeatist chanting of your rational brain _ <no point all over Michael is going to kill you>_ turning them over and over, and then all at once demanding that you un-stick your feet and dash after the lights bobbing down the hall.

Run now. Before they fade into the black, gone. Run. _Go._

You turn on your heel and run like hell.

~

For every ten limping strides she takes, Wendy’s next step is a stumble.

She sprawls on the floor and skins one knee bloody.

She gets up again, but oh God, her hip is on fire. Ahead of her is swallowing black nothingness and behind her is death. Every gulping wheezing breath sucks stale moldy air into her lungs but she’s too numbly frightened to care.

The pounding footsteps echo behind and oh, please no, he’s still coming. Her body is strong and her legs are thick and powerful from a lifetime of running, but the pain, she can’t take it. The painful thudding in her ankle will not bear weight.

Why is he still walking? Why won’t he just catch up? She’s sure that he could if he wanted to.

Is this another game?

Now she sees a faint light up ahead, seeping through a door. She swerves left across the hall— falling as she leaves the support of the wall, crying sharply as she falls, picking herself up again in a flurry of arms and legs—she pushes through the doors.

Beyond them is a pool. A big bright moon dances on the surface of the stagnant black water. She looks up. There she sees the stars. The building has a glass roof. She takes a gulp of air and gets a whiff of a dank, sour smell, so much worse than the hallway. Absolutely rancid.

Limping again now, she moves quickly toward the nearest door in the wall. Reaching the door, she yanks on the handle and steps through and—

Oh, why her? What did she ever do to deserve this?

It’s not another room at all. It’s a stairwell.

Whipping her head over her shoulder as he bursts into the room, she comes dangerously close to freezing in place at the sight of him—that black looming silhouette, the hideous white face—this is a nightmare, Wendy thinks, it must be, because boogeymen aren’t real.

Doesn’t matter, the nightmare is getting closer. She shakes off her daze and begins to climb.

The stairs are steep and she winces hard at every slam of her foot down on the cement steps. Up one flight she goes, around the sharp bend, up another. Her busted ankle knocks against the cement which triggers an explosion of pain up her leg. Her hands are cold and clammy now, just as clammy as the railing. She is pulling herself more than climbing. Below her, she hears his boots on the steps, climbing after her.

She’s reached the top, and here is another door. She collapses through it.

She must have done something really terrible in a past life, it occurs to her, staring out at the space behind the door, she must have done something downright wicked, to deserve this. God must be punishing her for it.

It’s just the stadium seating above the pool. Three meager rows of three bleachers and a rusty metal handrail. No other way down, except over the edge. She’s trapped herself.

Oh, but she has to keep moving. She can hear him coming up the last flight.

She huddles herself into the far corner and presses flat against the handrail. Leaning on the cold metal with her hip, it stings her bloodied skin like dry ice. She turns around, eyes rotating wildly, and sees the dark figure stepping out through the door.

Death stares her in the eyes, a towering, faceless shape.

The Shape approaches.

~

Ten seconds behind Travis and Diane you erupt into the pool building. Inside they stand fixed in their places, gawking up at some unseen thing.

Joining them, you see what they are gawking at. You gawk too.

Jutting out from the wall above the pool is a platform with rows of seats.

Cowering at the far corner of that platform, gripping the railings, dread setting her face like a stiff, pale, gaping corpse, is Wendy.

Michael is closing in fast.

Travis and Diane scream at her to jump. _Jump into the pool,_ they yell, in desperate chorus.

Wendy looks frantically over the railing—the drop must be thirty feet. But they are right; it is her only chance. Michael will be on top of her in seconds.

You watch in cold horror as Wendy scrambles desperately up the side of the railing, rising to a stand on the top bar, preparing to jump—

—and then she slips. Her foot slips on her own blood. The railing is covered in it.

Her hands fly open and snap shut again, grabbing at the air, scrabbling for purchase at nothing. Diane utters a sharp scream of surprise.

Wendy plummets like a stone; straight down to the cement.

She lands feet-first on the ground and the crack is sickening. You see a shattered piece of bone erupt through her shin. Your jaw is slack and your eyes are round. She begins to wail in agony on the cement, writhing, and you can’t look away. You wait for Travis to go to her. To do something.

He doesn’t. He’s white as a sheet.

From the stadium above, Michael peers over the railing at Wendy. He watches her for a moment. Inhaling her fear. Devouring it. Digesting it. Then he turns, disappearing back down the stairwell.

When Michael reappears at the bottom of the steps he stalks slowly toward Wendy, tauntingly slow.

Wendy sobs and screams as he approaches; she tries to crawl away from him, still trying to reach the pool. You can almost hear her fingernails scraping over the cement, the meaty squishing of her ruined leg dragging awkwardly, uselessly behind her.

You are about to see it, you realize all at once—you are about to witness with your own two eyes just what kind of monster Michael is.

Michael reaches Wendy and his shadow consumes her. Stooping down, he seizes Wendy by her hair. He sweeps her with ghastly ease to her knees. 

The world around you has melded into a dizzy haze and you feel like you are underwater. You can see—but not hear—that Wendy’s mouth is moving, begging and screaming. There is a grotesque moment where Michael lets her scream and you think that the world has stopped turning and frozen on its axis. It is just Michael and Wendy, now; just the monster you despise and fear _< and love and need>;_

and the girl he is about to slaughter.

The world starts turning again and Michael plunges the knife through Wendy’s throat.

The steel erupts out her skin on the other side along with a geyser of blood. Wendy gurgles and bubbles, coughing, but not really, it can’t even be called that anymore, can’t be called anything but a wet meaty wheeze, a deathrattle.

Then the light is gone from her eyes and she goes limp.

Michael pushes the back of Wendy’s head hard. He shoves her carelessly forward. She slides easily off his knife, collapsing. The red spreads quickly out around her on the cement.

Michael gazes at his kill. His shoulders rise and fall slowly, inhumanly steadily. Fresh glistening red drips off the tips of his fingers as easily as water. 

Then, he turns.

His white visage peers across the room. Your heart pumps away in your throat at a hideous speed. 

Michael is looking at you. Not at Travis. Not at Diane. You.

The mask itself is hideously penetrating. The dark eye-holes bore into you, swallowing, devouring. 

You watch him back. Your mind is silent. Your body is paralyzed. You wait for something within you to change. Perhaps for the hole in your chest, the hole that needs Michael, to knit suddenly shut. You wait, and drink in the evil staring back at you, the dark shape that looks human but on some level is not.

There is no change. 

With a broken, savage scream, Travis shatters the silence.

Michael’s head turns. When his eyes are gone from you, you start to breathe again. He seems to study Travis intently, observing the outburst as if transfixed, fascinated.

Almost contemplatively, Michael looks back down at Wendy’s body on the floor. 

Then, lifting his boot, he wedges it beneath her side.

You look on in stunned silence as Michael kicks Wendy’s lifeless body over. Rolling her closer to the pool.

It is obvious to you what he is doing, bitterly obvious. You’ve been on the receiving end of that behavior more times than you can count. It is sport, yes; play, yes; but it is not _just_ play. What Michael is doing is far, far more heartless, far more deliberately, calculatedly cruel—

—this is _taunting._

This is rubbing salt in an open wound. This is pettiness for pettiness’ sake. Michael is taunting Travis like a schoolyard bully.

And Travis takes the bait hook, line and sinker.

“DON’T YOU FUCKING TOUCH HER! I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU! DON’T YOU DARE FUCKING TOUCH HER!”

Deaf to his screams—or more likely saturating himself with them—Michael does it again. He shoves his boot beneath Wendy’s back this time, disgustingly gentle, as if she were a glass figurine, and flips her on her stomach. He flips her again, onto her back. Again, onto her stomach.

Michael rolls Wendy like a ball, all the way to the lip of the pool, and Travis only rages harder.

Now Wendy’s body teeters on the cement ledge. Her arm flops limply down, wrist dangling in the murky water. Michael, planting his boot down on her side, lifts his head again. The awful white mask peers across the way at Travis—screaming, raging Travis—who shreds his voice raw with every spitty syllable.

With a final, lazy flick of his boot, Michael sends Wendy spilling over into the filthy water.

The body lands with a plop and a splash. It bobs for a moment, sinking then, slipping beneath the grime, gone, except for the ripples spreading out, disturbing the stagnant surface.

In Michael’s hideous stare, you can feel his wordless goading.

_“Look; she made it.”_

Travis collapses to a heap on his knees and beats the cement.

Michael watches intently. A shudder travels the length of your body—even without seeing his eyes, you know that look. Vicious predatory amusement.

Then, all at once, as if compelled by some invisible force, Michael’s head whips around. He glances over his shoulder, going rigidly still.

Your jaw clenches up tight. _He’s heard something._ He’s listening now, picking up a fresh scent.

Forgetting about Travis in an instant, Michael turns. You watch the dark figure stalk around the side of the pool, disappearing through the doors at the opposite end. Gone again.

Travis _rages._ He screams at Michael to come back because he is going to kill him. He screams all sorts of obscenities and his voice is hoarse now and has begun to crack. Diane watches, hugging herself tightly, crying without sound.

Eventually, his screaming peeters out. Travis falls into silence, spent.

Nobody moves for a while. You watch the ripples in the water until they stop. All is still and quiet again.

Diane looks up at you. Her cheeks are streaked with tears. She looks at you longer, and something changes in her eyes, some jarring realization; then, with huge and frightened eyes, she looks past you, out into the hall, and glances all around her.

“Travis?” She says, the panic rising in her voice.

“Where’s Josh?”


End file.
